Hi everyone, I’d love some advice please. It’s quite a long winded story.
So my husband and I got married in 2019. We had a lovely few years of marriage and then we decided to do building work to our house. We had bought a probate 1930s semi with the intention of extending and refurbishing before we had kids. We overspent and had a terribly stressful time doing it. We both ended up off sick for a month each towards the end. However we grew to absolutely love the house. We then had our first baby in 2024 and he was a terrible sleeper. Although I still say it was the best year of my life, it was very hard at night for a lot of the year. My husband says it was the hardest/worst year of his life. I went back to work part time after my year off and so my salary dropped significantly. I found the actual work on the 3 days per week too difficult to finish by 5 so I changed roles and my salary dropped even further. We then weren’t making ends meet and so we decided to sell our house and move to a more countryside location where we could significantly reduce the size of our mortgage. We got the house under offer in January 2025 without going on Rightmove and cracked on with house hunting. I had always dreamt of having 3 kids and so knew I’d need a smaller age gap in order to have 3 before I got too old. So a few months after we agreed the sale of the house, I fell pregnant. A few weeks later we reached exchange on our house, we still hadn’t found anything to buy but we agreed a completion date a few months away and continued house hunting. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to secure an ongoing purchase before we completed so we moved in with my parents in September 2025. Living with my parents was tricky for me as my mum likes to be the boss. My mental health went downhill and so we booked an Airbnb nearby to live in from January until July, in the hope that we’d have found somewhere to move by then. 2-3 weeks into the Airbnb, my husband had, what I can only describe as, a nervous breakdown. He got incredibly wound up and obsessed over why we sold our house, asked me repeatedly to go back over the reasons why we sold, and the dates and steps of selling it. He would pace up and down, scratching his head and groaning while talking about how selling the house had ruined his life and that it was the biggest mistake etc. I found that really upsetting as I was at that point 8 months pregnant, trying to find my baby stuff in our storage unit and just trying to focus on getting in the oxytocin zone and to focus on the future. It was incredibly stressful for me and probably really unsettling for my poor toddler. At one point the GP sent an ambulance for my husband because of how I described his behaviour. Anyway, his mental health remained rock bottom and we ended up breaking the Airbnb contract and moving back to my parents house, which was a relief when I ended up with an emergency c section in March. My husband wasn’t by my side for the birth and even the next morning made plans to visit his parents for brunch rather than coming into hospital to see me for the start of visiting hours. So I had no one to get me any breakfast, he didn’t care if I was ok after major surgery and he didn’t care to meet his new baby boy. All this time I’m desperately telling myself that depression makes you selfish and that he’s mentally unwell and it’s not his fault etc. but gradually I could feel my relationship breaking apart. We either argued or were silent and his mental health was in tatters, still totally obsessed with our old house, why we sold and even crazily wondering whether he could ask the new owner if we could buy it back. Several times he has said he regrets having the second baby when we did, which really upsets me, because I don’t regret anything to do with the baby and he has been what has kept me going. I only regret selling the house, but I’m realistic about the fact that people make mistakes/wrong decisions and the only way now is forward.
In May we moved into our new house in Cranleigh and his mental health was so poor that on move in day, he didn’t help at all and sort of just stood around looking out of the windows of the new place while everyone else scurried around trying to get sorted (I was 9 weeks PP). 2 days later he told me he hated the house, hated Cranleigh and that it was the wrong place to have moved to. His mental health and our relationship deteriorated further. All throughout this he’s been having counselling and help from the GP and a private psychiatrist. A few weeks later he became totally obsessed with the idea that we should have moved to Cirencester. We did house hunt in Gloucestershire for a while but we never really considered Cirencester so this obsession was out of the blue. He became totally obsessed with one particular house that actually had a lot of the characteristics of our current house that he hates, so it was just totally deluded thinking and we argued about it a lot. Then for some reason a few weeks after that, he became obsessed with the idea of living in the New Forest. This was somewhere we had house hunted for most of the year and we had been under offer on a house there up until Christmas 2025 when the sellers pulled out and then came back to the table 2 days later, but that gave us wobbles and so we chickened out of the move and decided on Cranleigh as it was much closer to home and what we said was a good stop gap home to just settle and regroup for a while. Fast forward to now, maybe 3-4 months on, he’s still obsessed with moving to the New Forest. His mental health is still utterly dreadful, he hates our home and the town so much that he won’t even stay in the house without me, so I take him to all my social activities and he wanders around until I’m done, or at bathtime for the kids, he refuses to stay downstairs to do other jobs while I bath the kids, he insists that he doesn’t want to be alone in the house. He walked into the village one day and when he got back he was in a complete panic attack about how much he hates the village and he doesn’t want to be here. He has told me loads that he won’t be able to recover his mental health while we live here and I do believe that is true. Despite being on various anti depressants and anti anxiety medications and having counselling, he is just getting worse. So I just truly don’t see him getting better while living here. At least not any time in the next few months or year. Our relationship is crumbling and I fantasise about my future life where I’m divorced and just living with my sons. If we divorce then I still desperately want him to get better so that he can be a better father. I’ve told myself to hang on in there until April next year to then make a decision about divorce.
I know that the New Forest is somewhere that would give him a better chance at getting better. We love the sea and the forest and we have always felt at peace there.
Anyway, I’m writing all of this because I feel like I’m at a crossroads where I need to decide, do I uproot myself and my boys again, only months after buying an expensive house, to move away from my parents (who have been like co-parents to me over the last few months and helped look after my husband), down to the New Forest, into a rental, to give my husband the best chance at recovering his mental health, which I feel like in turn would give our marriage the best chance at recovering. If I do go there, do I put the house on the market now or wait until putting it on just after Christmas? If I did move down there, I would make sure I had a nursery place and other support in place before we move because I know my parents won’t be able to visit much.
Or do I stay put in Cranleigh where I’m close to my parents, I have a lovely nursery for my toddler and a safe, warm, albeit very miserable, home. I feel like if I give this the best shot I can, by moving down there, if he doesn’t improve at all and our relationship is still a dog’s dinner then I can safely say, I tried my best and I can decide to divorce. At that point I might decide to stay down there as I’ve always wanted to live by the sea, or I could move back to nearer to my parents. Or do I stay in Cranleigh and hope he gets better? How long do I stay with him while hoping he gets better? I know it’s meant to be ‘in sickness and in health’ and I know he’s mentally ill, but what about mine and the boys’ wellbeing? I don’t want to be living this utterly miserable life, I want kitchen dance parties and laughter and fun.
Because he feels like he made this terrible mistake, he’s no longer able to make any decisions and he’s already instructed the estate agent and then cancelled it again a few days later. So I feel like I just need to choose for myself, do I want to move to the New Forest with my boys and my husband? My gut says yes but it’s terrifying to move away from my support network in such dire circumstances.
I’d be so grateful for any advice or thoughts.